


Flashing Lights and Raisins: A Brief Study of the Strider in His Natural Habitat

by Newtavore



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (probably), Brother Feels, Canon Timeline, Dermatillomania (Minor), Epilepsy, Gen, Headcanon, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Procedures, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Strider Feels, Strider Manpain, neuroatypical character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 23:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3430349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/pseuds/Newtavore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don’t let anyone say you don’t love your little meteor baby, but… the guy’s a bit of a handful, literally and figuratively; when you carried him from the crash sight, he was barely big enough to cover your palm, sleeping quietly, a picture perfect little angel. Of course, that hadn’t lasted long. You almost wish you would have snapped a picture of him before he turned into a screaming little monster."</p><p>Or, In Which Dave Has Epilepsy and Bro Deals In a Spectacularly Bad, but Effective Manner. Things Continue On, As Usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashing Lights and Raisins: A Brief Study of the Strider in His Natural Habitat

**Author's Note:**

> i did so much research for this fic, but please, let me know if anything is remotely inaccurate in any way and ill totally do my best to fix/tag it or whatever.

Don’t let anyone say you don’t love your little meteor baby, but… the guy’s a bit of a handful, literally and figuratively; when you carried him from the crash sight, he was barely big enough to cover your palm, sleeping quietly, a picture perfect little angel. Of course, that hadn’t lasted long. You almost wish you would have snapped a picture of him before he turned into a screaming little monster.

 

His skin is just as dark as yours, his hair just as pale; his eyes are red as blood and when he opens them in the brightness of the Texas sun, he starts to scream, face scrunched up like a little raisin of rage and terror. You realize you have no idea what to do with a baby, and you stand stock still in horror for almost a full minute before you pull him close, cradle him to your chest, and cup your hand over his face. Once the bright light is gone, he calms, though he’s still a tearful, hiccuping little mess, far too shaky, his little fists balled up and pressed to his cheeks.

 

You name him Dave, because ’Dave’s Coffee’ has always given you free refills on cold days, and he reminds you of a little coffeebean right now, all small and curled up and brown. That, and because all the other choices suck, and you’ve always been shit at naming things. You realize then, that the only living thing you’ve ever cared for was a fish named Puke and you killed it in a week.

 

Can babies die from overfeeding?

 

Dear god you hope not.

 

But, slowly, you learn. You learn how to make sure a bottle isn’t too hot, you learn how to feed him without making him sick, you learn how to change a diaper- and wow, that had been a fucking experience- and you learn that he’s not actually smiling at you just yet, he’s just farting, like the stupid little coffeebean he is.

 

You still love him.

 

You watch over him obsessively. You aren’t afraid to admit it- there are far too many dangerous things in this world, hell, just in your apartment, and you’ve always been a paranoid bastard. The first time you have to leave him at home with a babysitter, because babies can’t come to clubs and the music would be too loud for him anyways, you call between each set- thirty minute intervals. The babysitter quits after a week of this treatment, but that’s okay- the next one you hire texts you updates every thirty minutes before you can even get your phone in your hand to call her, and answers whenever you do call. She’s much more understanding.

 

It’s… around that time, you think, when you notice Dave isn’t really like other babies. Granted, your experience includes a few nieces and nephews who’d all been just as terrified into submission as you had been, even as children, and shit that you see on television, but you think you would have noticed, or heard, if other babies acted like him. It’s hard to tell, really, but you _do_ watch him obsessively. You notice when he just… stops in the middle of doing his baby thing, staring blankly ahead like he can see something you can’t. He gets twitchy sometimes, while watching TV with you, or when looking out a window, and he’s really fucking clumsy for a baby, always flopping into his side- so much  that you honestly consider making him wear a helmet or something. Kid fell to earth riding a fucking meteor- he doesn’t need any more head trauma.

 

The only problem is that you notice all this shit, but you don’t exactly have a lot of extra funds to _do_ anything about it. You’re working clubs every night, desperately trying to fund the burgeoning puppet sex toy business you thought up while horribly drunk, the night before Dave crash landed into your arms. You’re broke as fuck, desperately trying to afford rent without leaving Dave alone or with babysitters for a negligent amount of time, and right now the priorities are heat, water, and food. Doctors aren’t even on the list.

 

So, you deal. You let him stare at shit, you catch him when he flops over, you keep him from smacking himself in the face, and he learns to crawl and becomes a fucking speed demon and you’re hard put to keep track of him, even with your obsessive watching.

 

You end up getting him the baby helmet, because Dave is fucking ridiculous and his head is too heavy for him to hold up, so he ends up running into shit full tilt while crawling.

 

Time goes by. You teach him how to walk, how to speak. His first word is ‘Bo’ and you will never admit it to anyone but you scoop him straight into your arms and cry when you hear it.

 

He has his first birthday. He has his second. He’s two, then three, and you’ve managed to get enough of a following that it’s no longer a choice between rent and baby formula, it’s a choice between name brand and store generic. Then, you get enough of a following that you no longer even have to think about buying fucking Reese’s brand cereal, you can just do it. It’s… freeing.

 

You can afford actual Lucky Charms. It’s still something that you take an inordinate amount of pride in.

 

Everything else gets kind of shoved into the background for a while. Dave is three, and he’s definitely in the terrible tantrum phase, but he’s usually distracted by you beatboxing or flipping your cap onto his head, and his wailing turns to giggling and his little raisin face melts into a smile. He likes to sit in your lap and play with your fingers, and you let him do whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t start screaming. He’s still sort of bad at using his words- he’ll babble for days about the stupidest shit, but when it comes to actually wanting something, he devolves back to whimpers and hand motions.

 

Sometimes he starts crying for no reason, and you spend ages trying to make him stop; he just clutches his head and whines and bites at your shoulders and all you can do for him is hold him and rock him a bit, and keep quiet.

 

And then, out of the blue, one day he falls over, entire body twitching, and you never really understood the phrase ‘and then his heart stopped’ until that moment, because your heart stopped and you think you might have pissed yourself a little bit from sheer terror.

 

Seizures aren’t exactly unfamiliar to you- you see them a lot at clubs, idiot teenagers with too much alcohol and ecstasy in their systems, getting themselves into shit they can’t handle. Dave is three, though, and you can’t think of anything that might have caused this.

 

After that, you go from name brand back to generic. It feels like you’ve lost, somehow, but you need the extra money. You cut back on your thirty minute long showers, you start saving your tips, you try to boost up your sales online because if you’re selling smuppets that means you can stay home with Dave, watch over him.  You start saving up, and you save and save and save for almost a month- during which your baby has four more seizures- and as soon as you can, you get him to the hospital.

 

Dave is fussy and unhappy about being here, and you don’t blame the poor kid; you’ve always hated hospitals yourself, and the looks the doctors and nurses give you when you admit that he’d seized multiple times before you could get him in makes you feel like shit. Like literal, smeared, disgusting nasty baby shit, and you have dealt with a lot of fucking baby shit, okay, you know exactly what you’re talking about.

 

They take him through tests and they don’t let you stay. They take him into rooms with machines, they strap him down, and all the while they drill you with questions- about your past, your financial status, how you’ve been treating him, all things that are _irrelevant_ and you have to dig your nails into your palms and count to the beat of the ticking clock in the corner in order to keep yourself from screaming.

 

Your fingers twitch, and you run the backs of them over your wrist, repetitively; after what seems like hours, they deliver a crying, exhausted Dave back into your arms and tell you to come back in a week, for the test results.

 

So, for a week, you stay home. You cancel all your DJing shit, you sell puppets like mad, and you spend time with Dave. Googling seizures in kids was perhaps the worst mistake you’ve ever made; for three nights you curl up with him pressed against your chest, and you clutch him close and try not to have a heart attack because _what if he has a brain tumor, what if he’s sick, what if what if what if_. Dave thinks it’s great. He’s happier than ever, getting cuddled whenever he so much as squeaks, having you attend to his every whim, playing with him whenever you aren’t busy stabbing yourself with needles and punching the sewing machine to make it work.

 

He has another seizure. You turn him on his side and slide a pillow under his head, and you count, because this is what the internet told you to do, not the stupid fucking hospital. It lasts a minute and a half, and when he’s done, he sleeps for an hour straight, curled up in your lap, until he wakes up and asks for apple juice like nothing happened.

 

A week passes. You go back. The doctor lays out MRIs and CAT scans and uses words you don’t understand, telling you things that you don’t want to hear. You get the gist of it halfway through- he describes Dave’s seizures as _epileptic_ , and you wonder why he couldn’t just _say_ that. You also wonder how bad of an idea it would be to punch him, because he keeps talking. You make it out of the doctors office with a prescription, pamphlets, and a bill the length of your arm; the nurse at the front desk stops you before you leave, leans in, and asks if Dave’s been _baptized_ , like that makes a difference. You see the way her gaze lingers on his pale hair, his hooded red eyes- the poor kid is tired out, sleepy, and you don’t have time for her bigoted shit.

 

You tell her no, because the church of Satan doesn’t allow such foolishness and obviously your baby is slated to be the antichrist- what kind of antichrist would he be, if he’d been baptized? Her offended, scandalized gasp is music to your ears, and you leave in a swirl of Dave’s sweet laughter.

 

CPS visits.

 

You’re not sure who called them, but you’re about 94% positive it was the bitch of a nurse you’d pissed off. A tall, slender woman- conventionally pretty but definitely not your type- comes and looks over your apartment, tsking, making notes, writing things down on her little clipboard, and you are so, so glad you shipped out this week’s order of smuppets already or else you’re sure you would have lost Dave right then and there.

 

She sits you down.

 

She’s much nicer than anyone you’ve had to deal with so far; she lets Dave pull at her skirt, and when he babbles shit at her about his newest fascination- birds, the kid always wants to know fucking everything about birds- she nods and gasps and claps her hands excitedly at all the right parts. Dave is ecstatic to have a far more responsive audience than usual, and he wriggles and climbs up onto the couch and giggles when she lets him braid her hair. She tells you that you’re going to have to make major improvements, if you want to keep your boy. She tells you that Dave is considered a special needs child, now, and he needs more care, better care, a better place to live, a safer environment.

 

Dave fumbles with her brown hair with fat baby fingers, and she pats him on the shoulder and smiles and say thank you like he’s done her a favour, even though her hair is rucked up to the side and looks utterly ridiculous.

 

She leaves you with paperwork that you actually understand, and even though she’s lacking the downstairs equipment to really make this relationship work, you almost kiss her.

 

That doesn’t make the list any easier to handle, because you aren’t sure how you’re going to afford all of this shit, because you can't ask for money from your parents and you don’t want to ask for money from your sister, but… you don’t want to lose Dave more.

 

Some things, you can handle on your own. You move your smuppet building contraptions to the crawlspace above the living room so he can’t get to it. You sand the corners off the furniture yourself. You make sure the corners of the walls and doorways are padded with pool noodles and duct tape, because hell, you’re a fucking bachelor and it’s not like you bring people back from the club. You couldn't give less of a shit about the decor.

 

Dave thinks this is a game, and he has a hell of a time giggling and bouncing himself off the pool noodled corners. Every time you catch him doing it, you try to give him a stern look, but it always dissolves into a weird half smile anyways.

 

Then you pick up his new prescription, and you feel like you’re never going to smile again.

 

You have a new worry, to the tune of five hundred dollars a month straight out of your bank account. Dave’s pills are expensive as fuck and without health insurance, you have no hope of getting them- not unless something changes. Not that you need to have worried- you never end up filling more than one bottle. The first time Dave takes his pills, he’s sick. He throws them right back up, all over the living room floor, and you’re just glad it’s hardwood because it makes it easier to clean up. The next day is the same, and the day after that. You take him back, they look him over, you get a new prescription.

 

This is how the next six months go. Dave turns four, CPS comes again. Carmen is nice, and assures you the changes you’ve made are great, but leaves you with another list. Dave keeps having seizures, you pad the floor with those silly foam puzzle piece tiles because the last thing you want him to do is hit his head, and Carmen comes again.

 

Your life is a never ending stream of seizures, Carmen’s visits, and hospitals. New drugs, new bills; once again you go from name brand to generic, and once again you feel defeated. You get Dave a pair of shades just like yours, except darker, and they help- he stops having seizures when the light in the room changes, or when he sees a reflection of the sun off something shiny, at least, but he still gets them with no trigger, for no reason, and it kills you inside.

 

After another six months, you mail Roxanne. You get a letter back containing a check that equals the entire monetary value of your debt, plus six months rent. You cry yourself to sleep that night.

 

More drugs, more failures, more seizures. Dave turns five, and he goes to school. You think, when you drop him off at preschool for the first time, that you’re the one who’s freaking out. When you look around, you’re glad to see you aren’t the only one- all the other parents look the same, pulling their kids in for one last hug, one last hair straightening. You talk to Dave’s teacher, explain his seizures, explain his shades, your hands trembling because you don’t want to leave him; she pats you on the shoulder and nods and looks very sympathetic. She reassures you, and tells you that she’ll call you if anything happens.

 

Dave’s first day of school goes fine, as does his second, his third… You only have to pick him up from school early twice, that first month. One of those times is because another student stole his shades and the sunlight... Well. The sunlight made him convulse, and apparently he'd terrified the other students because the teacher asks you to come in and explain to a bunch of brats about things like _epilepsy_ and _ocular albinism_ , and the entire time you have to fold your hands into fists and count ceiling tiles so you don't lash out.

 

Dave asks you what a demon is, and whether he should feel bad about being one. 

 

That night, he shares the futon with you, and you spend all night trying not to cry into his hair. You think back to the nurse who’d asked you so snidely _is he baptized Mr. Strider_ and how you’d had to bite the inside of your cheek to not scream at her, all the people that had stared at him, when he was a baby, stared at his red eyes with fucking _apprehension_ on their faces, and you just… you just can’t. You can’t handle it. He’s the sweetest kid, he’s so nice, he’s such a good baby and shit like this happens and it just tears you apart.

 

You teach him how to punch.

 

He takes to katas and forms like a fish to water, learning them eagerly because he sees you doing them and _Bro you’re so cool I wanna be just like you_ and you just think about the scabs under your gloves and how you can’t sleep at night without being able to hear him breathe, and you shake your head and tell him to be _better_.

 

You teach him how to kick, and how to hit without breaking his knuckles. When he gets in school detention for punching a kid in the throat, you teach him self control, when to wait and bide your time and when to strike. You teach him to defend himself, because no one else is going to do it. No one else but you, and you can’t be with him 24/7, as much as you want to. 

 

Training is hard, because he’s still seizing. None of the medications are working; you’ve kept track of every pill, every drug, and you have a list as long as that first hospital bill tacked to the wall by the fridge, and you bring it to every doctor’s appointment. It just keeps getting longer.

 

Nothing works.

 

You see a new doctor. He looks at your list, your obsessively written tracks and accounts of everything that’s been done, your measured down to the minute log of what Dave eats, what he drinks, what pills he’s taking and when. He raises a brow at you, at your shades, at your gloves, at the hunched, uncomfortable posture you get whenever you leave the safe space you’ve made for yourself and Dave. You stare back at him till he gets to the fucking point.

 

He gives you more medication. He says to make sure Dave is swallowing it, he chides your boy for cheeking pills, and you take him out of that office without a second glance.

 

Carmen comes to visit again, because doctors are assholes and can’t handle being told to shove their unwanted accusations where the sun don’t shine. She tells you to stop upsetting people, because she has cases where the guardians clearly in need of her services, unlike you. You think she might be upset, but then she smiles and lets Dave braid her hair again- it’s longer than it was before, and your boy actually manages something approximating a decent twist. You’ve been getting him to practice with leftover yarn and string, because it improves his dexterity.

 

She asks you if you’re alright. If you’re handling things well. You nod, and tug your gloves further up your wrists. Stress is hard for you, it always has been, but you’re managing. You’re handing yourself fine. You channel your fear-energy into sewing, into making charts and lists and researching everything you can about what Dave is dealing with.

 

Carmen looks through your apartment. She writes things down on her clipboard, she takes her notes, and when she leaves, she hands you a packet of rubber bands. She gives you a knowing look. She says her daughter uses them.

 

You wrap one around your wrist and snap it. Your fingers stop twitching.

 

Dave turns six. You get him a wooden sword for his birthday, and he starts practicing his katas with it. You lose a lamp before you move him out to the roof- the roof you’d just spend two weeks dumping gravel all over, because gravel is less hard and damaging to fall on than straight concrete. Besides, it’ll help him with his footing.

 

Dave turns seven. His birthday is spent in the hospital, because he’d had a seizure at school lasting over six minutes. You snap through three separate rubber bands before they let you into his room, and you don’t leave, even when they threaten to call security to drag you out. Someone takes pity on you and lets you stay, and you’d never been so grateful towards a complete stranger.

 

A month later, you’re back in the hospital. Then again, two weeks later. This continues for… god, for years. He’s so sick, he can’t go three weeks without a bad one, has so many little ones that if it wasn’t for your obsessive counting you would have lost track, and there’s nothing you can do. Nothing’s working. No matter what they give him- they try everything, children’s anticonvulsants, adult’s anticonvulsants, medications you research and keep track of, and the list gets longer and longer and nothing helps.

 

Carmen visits you once a month. She says she’s worried. Not about Dave, about you. You aren’t sleeping as much as you should, aren’t eating very well, and she’s worried you’ll make yourself sick. You don’t- you don’t _ignore_ her, per se, but… you aren’t your first priority right now. Dave is.

 

So you keep up with his training. You go easy on him, but this is the only thing you can control. You can make Dave able to protect himself from outside forces, because you can’t teach him to defend himself from his own body, and you feel _so fucking useless_ because of it. You feel so pointless, because all you can do is make sure he doesn’t hit his head, and make sure he doesn’t choke if he throws up.

 

Things get hard, for a while. Your business takes off, so you ditch your DJing altogether, to stay home with him. His school attendance is spotty at best, and you get visited by a truant officer more than once. Luckily, Carmen is far better at explaining things to people than you are. You do your best to keep him up to date; you make sure he does his homework, you turn it all in for him, you get him signed up with online supplement classes.

 

Dave starts talking to Rose. Rose introduces him to Jade, who introduces him to John. You begin to hear about their escapades, Dave telling you what John did that day, how Rose is doing, how Jade did this or that. It’s… nice. Dave has never had friends, not really. You’re glad for him.

 

Dave still seizes at the drop of a hat, though. You get used to cleaning him up afterwards, and soon enough, he gets used to it too. It’s… sad. You feel sad. Your kid has been through so much, and it _hurts_ that he has to deal with it. You never stop looking for answers for him, ever- his eighth birthday passes, his ninth, and still, you find yourself desperately searching for something to help.

 

You talk to doctor after doctor after doctor until someone gives you the answer you want to hear- there’s something you can try, something you can do, and six months after Dave’s tenth birthday, you’re back in the hospital again, this time for something completely different.

 

You’re snapping bands like crazy; Roxanne just sent you another few thousand dollars, and you feel sick to your stomach because Dave is bundled up in bed, attached to so many fucking wires, and this room is not nearly defensible enough for your tastes because the window is too wide and you can’t lock the door, can’t keep people out--

 

Your temper isn’t helped by Dave’s whining, but you can’t fault the kid- he’s starving, actually starving, since that’s the point, that’s why you’re here. A new diet, a new method to control the convulsions, the last resort. No food till dinner’s the rules, and you’d sneak him a fucking candy bar or something except this is literally the only thing left. This is all you have, and if this doesn’t stop the fits you’re terrified they’re going to take him away from you. Because if this doesn’t work, they’re going to think that you… maybe that you weren’t doing what you were supposed to for him. That you weren’t making him take his pills, or something. You don’t know.

 

It takes three days for the ketogenic diet thing to kick in, and Dave is miserable the whole time. You don’t blame him. You’re frustrated, sleepless, tired and paranoid and unhappy, and you’ve picked your hands raw because you snapped all your rubber bands on the first day. But finally, you can take him home.

 

Your pantry is cleaned out; you dump everything that’s too high in carbs, too high in sugars, too high in stuff that Dave’s not supposed to have. You buy new food, you waste an entire paycheck on shit you’ve never even considered purchasing before, and now going to the grocery store feels less like defeat and more like a death sentence but you can handle it. You can deal with it.

 

Dave is ten. He’s small, he’s so small, thin and wiry and short, and this diet is only going to keep him that way. You stuff him up with foods high in fat and low in carbs- the kid has his own fucking mini-fridge full of vegetables, for god’s sake, and you’ve never been gladder that he’s not a picky eater.

 

The one thing you don’t deny him is his apple juice; he’s supposed to be drinking tea, decaf coffee, or straight water, but he gives you that fucking look and you just count his carb and sugar levels and make sure you balance it out enough for him to have at least one bottle a day.

 

Your own food, you keep shoved in the big fridge, along with a bunch of shitty swords to discourage him from stealing your crap. You’re far less healthy with what you eat; you have to pick up shifts at the club again, to pay for all his shit, but you do it without complaining, because its something you can do. You make sure he eats fatty meat and at least two cups of some kind of leafy whatever a day; you help him through the first week, where he’s curled up and craving sugar something horrible, through the headaches and muscle cramps and shakiness. You get him all the supplements and tablets he could ever need, you check in on him at hour intervals while you’re out, and he grumbles and says _you’re smothering me dude_ and _I can take care of myself_ in that offhand way he learned from you, and you roll your eyes and ruffle his hair and kiss his forehead and go down three sodas because the caffeine helps you stop shaking so much.

 

You don’t sleep. When you aren’t at the club, you’re at home, up in the crawlspace, working on your puppets because business is booming and money is rolling in. Your bank account isn’t red anymore; you count it as a personal victory.

 

Dave’s seizures lessen. You step up his training.

 

He gets fast, he gets strong, and once he’s stopped feeling sick, once you’ve managed the perfect balance of carbs, sugars, and fat, he gets more energy, gets happier. He’s more energetic than you, sometimes, and you start setting him exercises to do while you go rest.

 

Dave turns eleven. You get him turntables, blow three saved up paychecks on a good set, because he deserves it. His seizures have all but stopped, and you have never been more grateful.

 

Now that you don’t have to worry about him choking in his sleep, or falling off the bed and injuring himself, you move all the storage you have in the one room and set up a bed in there. He gets a room for his eleventh birthday, and you don’t think he’s ever been happier. He’s starting to distance himself from you, because hanging out with his older brother isn’t ‘ironic’ or ‘cool’, and… you figured it would happen, yeah, but that doesn’t mean you don’t lay in bed, terrified for the first few nights because you can’t hear him breathe.

 

You check on him constantly. You get even less sleep than you normally do, but you get used to it. You adapt. He gets better. Gets healthier. He’s still so small, so thin- he can’t gain weight like this, food just goes in and disappears, like he has a fucking black hole in his stomach, but he’s not seizing. Right now, he’s… healthy.

 

You get happier. You get more sleep. Your smuppet business takes off. You take Dave to the outpatient care center every three months, then every six months. They make sure you aren’t fucking him up. He gets happier, and you eat more. You gain back some of the muscle you lost, you feel more energetic. You stop feeling so stressed, and you stop snapping rubber bands around your wrists.

 

Dave turns twelve. He’s been seizure free for six months. You train him harder than ever, but you’re careful with him. Carmen’s visits are less and less- once a month, once every three months, once every six months- but she still shows up on occasion, and the last thing you want is to go through all this shit, and still get Dave taken from you. You have nightmares about it, clutching Cal to your chest because you’ve gotten used to something sleeping beside you and now that it’s not Dave, you need a replacement.

 

You feel sick.

 

Something is coming. You know it is, you can feel it. You call Roxanne, you call James. They feel the same, but they don’t know what’s coming, they can’t… they don’t _know_ the same way you do. They don’t feel the same sense of… foreboding.

 

You start to distance yourself from Dave. You pull away, you focus on training him, you focus on teaching him to fight and defend because he’s going to need it, you know, you can tell.

 

They call you back about six months after Dave’s birthday. They wean him off the diet, and he eats his first bag of chips in two and a half years and falls in love. You buy him dried apples and let him eat what’s probably far too much junk food, but you’d spent a long time forcing him to have such a strict diet that it’s just… you can’t do it anymore. Poor guy deserves a fucking candy bar.

 

Dave turns thirteen. It hurts your heart, when he trades out his shades- his new ones suit his face much better, but still. It was a connection, and you don’t have that anymore.

 

Shit goes down.

 

Shit goes down so hard that you’re not even sure what’s happening. Meteors fall from all angles; James isn’t answering his phone, Roxanne has been incommunicado for the past three days. This is it. This is what you’ve been dreading. A meteor heads towards your little apartment, and all you can think of it how _Dave is still inside_ , and before you know it you’re slicing that bitch in half, because _holy shit why the fuck not_.

 

You fight.

 

You die.

 

You die with a shitty sword sticking out of your chest, impaled by a fucking dogheaded monster barbarian, of all things. He got you when you were down, you didn’t have a chance.

 

The dream bubbles are… they are everything you hate, to be honest. Limitless, indefensible, unknown. You lock yourself in your replica of your shitty apartment and just… wait.

 

There isn’t anything you can do.

 

You can’t find Dave, and you suppose that’s a good thing. If you can’t find him, that means he’s alive. He’s alive, and you’re not, and you suppose that it’s best if you just stay where you are. You can’t distract him, even if every bit of you itches to keep him safe. You need him. You love him. But you raised him well, at least it seems so- he’s fine. He’s fine, and he doesn’t need you.

 

Years pass. You stay in your little apartment. Over time, you end up host to a number of other timeline Striders, Daves of all kinds, Dirks too, and Hals, and humanoid robots and strange game constructs and everything you could possibly imagine. They come and go, staying for a while, then wandering off again. You… end up spending a lot of time reminiscing. Days, months years pass like grains of sand through an hourglass, and then it’s over.

 

You remember when Dave was little, so little, and all he wanted was to be just like you.

 

When the game is won, and he’s kneeling on the ground with his arms around you, your chest aching, his arms wrapped around you so tight you can’t breathe, you know. You know he turned out better than you ever could have, and… it’s a good feeling.

 

You can feel the trembling jitter of his skin under your hands. You know he paid a high price in order to win, you know they all did. You know every single child- because they’re kids, they’re all fucking kids- sacrificed something in order to make it out alive. In order to end this. It hurts, but you cradle him to your chest and tell him how fucking _proud_ you are and he elbows you and tells you _stop copying Dadbert dude_ but you can feel his shoulders shaking, and you let him hide his tears against your chest, your hands combing through his hair.

 

He had almost six blessed, seizure free years. When he gets back, when things return to how they were, when everyone settles into a mixed universe, and he suddenly has to deal with living alongside four other Striders, he has three in one day.

 

You sit with him through every one, sliding a pillow under his head and thanking god everything is still exactly the way you left it, little foam tiles on the floor and everything. You’re going to have to move, if you’re all going to stick together, but that’s fine. You’ll manage. You’ve always managed, you and Dave.

 

Alternian medicine offers new alternatives, new medications. Dave ends up taking something usually prescribed to overladen psionics. It works. The seizures settle, are manageable. You get used to sharing a living space with four people instead of one, and when you move into a new place, you spend six hours coating every hard floor surface in the house with soft foam tiles. No one stops you. The older Strider, the rich one, the one who’s funding all of you currently, he provides you with tiles in all colours, and a large package of rainbow rubber bands.

 

You adapt.

 

All of you do. Things… settle.

 

Things settle. That’s as much as you can ask for. Dave is fine- he has friends, finally, friends he can interact with outside of a computer screen, friends who have been extensively drilled on what to do and who to call in case of an emergency. He’s happy. He’s healthy.

 

Things are good.

 

For the first time in a long time, your default emotion isn’t fear, or worry. If anything… you’re content. Your business hasn’t suffered at all- if anything, the addition of Alternian customers is making it boom bigger than ever. You have a nest egg about as big as your old apartment saved up, just in case. You’re… you’re content.

 

It’s an odd feeling, but… not a bad one.

 

You could get used to it.

 

 


End file.
